All Fair in
by Dogsthorne
Summary: [Set after Evey's departure] V finds Evey and a series of choices have to be made. Being a personified idea gets complicated when emotion gets in the way, it seems. [VEvey] [movieverse]
1. In a fortnight

**A/N:** This fic started out as an impulse, then started to grow a solid plot outline somewhere after the third chapter. So bear with the jerky start, and do take the time to leave a review. Feedback is always helpful in finding out what I did right/wrong, and it's always heartening to know someone is reading. :)

**An note on the characters:** This is strongly moveieverse, except not. I've only seen the full version of V4V once, in a theatre many months ago. So some OOC and my personal interpretation of the characters is inevitable. Also, I'm making it 10 years instead of 20 that V's been doing this vendetta kick, though THE Fifth will happen in the story's current year. It is_ not_ GN!V/Evey/verse at all by any shot, especially since I've never read the GN. All info/theories are based on the info that the movie gave, and my own extrapolation. :)

Set a couple of weeks after Evey leaves V because of the interrogation.

* * *

It had happened very quickly.

One moment, she was in ducking out of the heat-smogged bar and running into the alley, and the next there was a knife at her throat and blood at her feet. The blade was dull but she could feel her pulse thumping wildly against it.

Despite it all, Evey wasn't all that surprised when V stepped from the shadows.

Darkness suited him. Bright red dripped wetly from the steel in his hands.

'_You!'_

Her incredulity rebounded off the cramped walls of the crooked alley. The mask tilted—but the knife at her throat had jerked at her cry and the man holding it started screaming again.

'I mean it! Stand back! Go—I'll kill her! Stand back! I'll fucking kill her!'

The Fingerman's breath moistened Evey's ear as he gibbered to himself. She could feel him struggling to hold her tight while forcing them both further behind the shield of wire mesh hanging from the fire-escape balcony above to the ground. Some fool had left it there, and now she might die because of it. Even V could not throw through thickly twisting metal.

How fortunate she was stripped of such fears only a month ago.

'You were following me,' she said numbly. Cloaked by shadows, the hard line of his shoulders was terrifyingly familiar. Like from her nightmares, that unseen face. A bright light, blinding her eyes. The fear twisted into outrage, like a red haze rising. '_You were following me!'_

'Shutupshutupshutup,' her attacker snarled desperately, but she could not stop now, not when her words were bubbling out like blood spittle, the bile of dread in the back of her throat.

'You were supposed to let me go!' she shouted; there was a sob caught near the end. The man bruising her by the waist shook her a little in warning, but it didn't matter- she was already shaking, that mocking black silhouette, the water choking her lungs. The taste of cell-stone sweat and despair in the air. Terror stole her voice and distorted it so that each word was a harsh groan of sound. 'Let me go—I'll kill you before you take me again! Do you hear? _I'll kill you_!—'

The sudden spike of pain in the soft of her throat cut ragged her words. 'Shut up,' the man said again, less convincingly, then under his breath, 'I've never met you before, you stupid bitch. What the fuck is wrong with you?' His hand was shaking under her throat.

'If you kill her, what exactly would you endeavor next?' V moved closer as if neither of them had spoken. His voice was as cold and indifferent as the night. 'I'm curious to see what you've come up with.'

'I'll fucking kill her if you come any closer,' the man repeated dumbly.

'We've covered that,' V said in a tone as light as frost. He didn't move. 'And what next? Where would your leverage be? I assure you the moment she breathes her last is yours as well.'

'I'll—she… You won't let her die.'

'Neither will you let yourself.'

The blade had bit through Evey's skin in her attacker's tense panic. It scattered her waking nightmares, the pain jerking her back like a wild dog on a leash. The darkness faded, forced her back into the grim moonlit alley, away the grey ghosts of stone walls in her mind. Back to the face what her mind had balked to see—a frozen mask, Guy Fawkes, V.

'V,' she said without thinking, a plaintive call. Like a child upon waking in a dark room and afraid to find strangers in the closet, monsters under the bed. The man behind her hissed and his arm tightened convulsively around her chest and arms, her shirt riding higher. When she gasped and struggled to breathe, the pain in her throat spiked again.

'Stay still!' the man behind her screamed again when V made a slight movement. 'I mean it! You're both under arrest! I swear I'll—'

'I need no reminder,' V snapped. The blood of the Fingerman's previous two companions was trickling from behind him to between and around his boots, making for a macabre river. It pooled to where she stood, trapped by the man and dead end behind him, her feet was soaking in dead men's blood through the thin soles of her throw-away shoes.

A few feet away, V stood pristine and untouchable. There was no monster.

'V,' she repeated quietly, to herself, but his head turned slightly and Evey knew he had heard her. He was here. Him. The mask was ivory in the moonlight, a mockery of a grin. It was strange mix of hate and breathless longing; in a flash, she knew he was looking at her, only her, could tell in the split-second he stood as if bracing for a strike, a man hiding behind a mask, and she could not look away. He was afraid of her, she saw, and it did not make sense.

Then the pain returned and the moment was gone; V was invincible as the stars again and the rough pants of the man behind her filled the alley.

'Right, I'm the boss here, alright? I've got the girl,' her attacker said, shaky voice growing stronger when the masked man did not answer, 'so you're going to do exactly as I fucking say. Alright? Alright. You're going to drop all those knives, and you're going to walk ahead of us all the way. If I can't see you, this girl's going to get it, so don't try anything funny. I'll fucking kill her, you got it?' The man's voice went higher, tight with desperation. 'Don't fuck with me, you got it? I'm the one in control here! I'm the one in control!'

The man jerked the knife and Evey couldn't help it, a cry escaped her as the blunt blade cut open another the side of her throat. Something hot and liquid trickled down her collarbone; the surprise startled a gasp from her. She could not look at V.

An ugly sound came from where V stood. But when he spoke, the words came serenely as before, like a string of cool droplets into a pond. 'For your sake, I would refrain from doing that again,' he said, sounding distant. 'It does not do to mishandle one's only chance of survival.'

'I'll kill her!'

The terrorist seemed to consider. 'Hmm. Repetitive. But no.'

'What?'

'I said no,' he repeated coldly. 'I refuse your terms. And what would you do now, monsieur?'

French, Evey realized with something akin to shock. It surprised her how little she actually cared about the situation; her thoughts were raging around V—why is he here, how dare he be here, why is he always _saving _her, _goddamnit_-- more than the man holding her life hostage. V only used French when he was furious, or discomforted, or taken by surprise. For a moment, she had an impulse to tell him that it was really alright, she didn't mind dying, she'd already done it once, remember? He should be proud that she wasn't more afraid, really.

And then it all came crashing back: the lies, the ugly humiliation, the betrayal, all the more unforgivable because he said she needed it, that sadistic bastard had dared to say _she wanted it_. The bitter anger settled in her like an old friend and she kept silent. Vaguely, she was aware that her new captor had started screaming curses by her ear, and there was something sticky congealing between her toes, and a blade shaking dangerously at her throat, but all she could see was V through the spaces of the metal mesh. The darkness and long alley walls made a strange frame of V, like a snapshot of beautiful death: his head bowed slightly like a conductor's pause before the symphony, the rich and decadent cloak arching around him with the fangs of his instruments gleaming sweetly beneath. She found all fear had left her and there was finally enough space in her lungs to breathe properly.

So proud.

When the man had finally run out of breath and unimaginative threats, V took over with all the patient boredom of someone who knows exactly what he wants and how he's going to get it. Evey could feel the arm pinning her to him trembling in the transparency of V's apparent indifference.

'Bravo, monsieur,' he said. He was closer now, or perhaps it was the shadows that had shrunk away. Evey could not remember him moving. 'A fine performance. Perhaps now you'll like to give up? We can part in equal trade: the girl with me, and you with your life…' A smooth, extravagant gesture sweeping the air, 'No need to come to arms or harm, and we go our separate merry ways—well, except your previous companions, that is, but such are the hazards of the job, are they not?'

V's voice had adopted the lilting flow of a theatrical speech somewhere along the way; too smooth, too inviting. _Liar_, the thought came unbidden, quick as a flash of shame. Evey hadn't realized how much V was panicking. The irony was laughable in its own right.

The Fingerman started to laugh. It started quietly, a hiccup, then grew into a monstrous gurgling roar, laced with mad terror and a twisted kind of triumphant fatalism. He had to grip Evey by the back of her neck so the blade would stay level with her throat.

'You fucking liar,' he gasped. When he gurgled another choke of a laugh, Evey realized with a sick jump of guilt that she must have whispered the thought _yes, he is _aloud. Soft enough that V didn't catch it, thank god. 'You think you're going to bloody kill me, don't you? Well fine. Alright. I won't shit around. You probably will. But I'm going to raise hell before I go.' He stopped gasping suddenly, a strangled laugh cut off halfway. 'Drop those knives.'

V didn't move. The Fingerman jerked her head back rough so Evey's throat was bared, the scarlet striking against the pale skin. Evey hissed as something cool and alien pressed into her flesh.

'If I'm not going to get out of this, then I've nothin' to lose, do I?' There was a smile in the man's voice that spoke little of sanity. 'Drop 'em.'

The masked man hesitated, then Evey cried out again, instinctively, and there was a metallic clatter as the knives hit the ground.

'See how the tables have turned,' the man crooned by her ear. 'All for a pretty face. But I prefer girls with hair, little lady.'

He raised his voice to V, and there was a shrill crack running through it. 'Alright,' he said. 'Now take off that mask.'


	2. The fate of free will

-

It was strange, but she hadn't really been afraid up till that point. There was nothing to be afraid of: if she died, she died and that was the end of it, the result of a single evening's carelessness and a chance mistake in some unremarkable bar. All this—_drama_ because of a single ID card, her face in the snapshot blank-eyed and blatantly bared. She hadn't even realized V had returned her ID to her old coat and it had tumbled out with loose change when she dug into her pocket, card surface gleaming on the bar-top by the arm of the Fingerman. If not for her name printed brazenly in full across it, she was sure he would never have recognized her. As it were, the few seconds of uncomprehending disconnection between the ghost-child in the card and her shorn-headed face had given her a few futile seconds of head-start before the man hollered to his companions.

Not that it matters now, Evey thought, and there was a bitter twist of satisfaction that she could blame V for this second death. Because for all his eloquence on choices and freedom, the only real choice she ever made for himself in his presence was to leave him, and even_ this, _even _now_ he wouldn't let her finish it on her own. Must he always be there, always in the darkness waiting? Wasn't it enough that he haunted her still, even with a whole city between them, even after two weeks? It wasn't fair, wasn't _fair _that even during the day there would be flashes of him, making her ache with all the savageness of a betrayal: steadying warmth, darkness impassive, the taste of cool rain and leather…

And now he was here and she hadn't really believed it till he'd dropped the knives. The metallic rasp as the blades hit the grit-ground sang through her mind: a harsh, warning note that snapped her awake better than any slap.

V _never_ lost control of situations. Evey stared at him blankly and had the distinct feeling he wasn't meeting her eyes. He _couldn't…_really...

'You got ten seconds!' Her attacker's voice was a reed now, high and strained. 'And if you move one more fucking step—if I even fucking _think _you're going to move—this bitch here is going to die. You think you can get to her faster than me? You think? YOU THINK? Take off the fucking mask!'

A cry sounded. 'Don't!' Evey realized it was her; her voice was thin and stretched as well, and carried high over the Fingerman's panting. The man jerked her like a ragdoll but she didn't care, there was something cold tightening in her stomach and shaking her spine—'Don't listen, don't do it, don't—'

'SHUT UP!'

'—he's lying, don't do it, go—'

'SHUT UP! I SAID SHUT UP! TEN—'

The shock came like a blow: V was still standing there, hands empty and half-raised by his side, and dear god, she could actually see him thinking, could actually see him _struggling_. With what? She was afraid to know; it had to be an act; this was _V_. 'Get lost, go away, go away,' she wanted to scream, but the dread tripped her tongue and the words came out as a croak.

'EIGHT!'

_No_, Evey thought. The venom behind it didn't surprise her, there was no time for pretense now. _Not like this,_ the thought whispered desperately, _not like this, not for me— _

'SEVEN!'

--and V started to move, just a slight tremor of shifting weight, just a change of breath, but a terrible hope was starting to grow when instinct intervened: she could not help making a small choke when blade dug deeper into her flesh, spilling bright red agony. V stilled immediately, and she saw him stop breathing—

'DON'T MOVE! I'M WARNING YOU! I WARNING YOU! SIX SECONDS, BASTARD! FIVE!'

--and there was a wet hotness staining around her neck, and a flash of shame at her own weakness, her pandora betrayal, and Evey knew, _knew_ with blinding clarity that V would never make it even if he tried: he could not save her. The wire-mesh covered too much and those few seconds he needed to get to the right angle to throw a knife would be her last—

'—go away, I hate you! _Go away_—'

'I SAID SHUT UP! FOUR! THREE!'

--and therein lies the rub, Evey realized dizzily. No matter what happens, he will never forgive me for this. He was invulnerable, once, and now…--

'TWO!'

'Don't, he's lying, _DON'T_—'

'SHUT _UP!_ ONE!'

'He's not lying.'

The alley fell silent, but a roaring thunder was rising in Evey's ears. The Fingerman was breathing heavily but the note in V's voice had silenced even him—it had sounded far off, quiet.

_Resigned_, the voice whispered. _No_.

_Not like this. _

It was very clear, suddenly. So simple she would've laughed, if not for the strange ache in her chest. It could be the blood loss, but why lie?

V's hands were rising to the mask slowly, as if underwater. In the cloak and boots and dark suit, he looked less like a creature cut from the shadows itself rather than a mere man in a costume. A man with certain skills at knives and clever words, yes, but a just another Londoner in a foolish mask nonetheless. She could almost hear her attacker seeing this, this dawning realization, and her chest squeezed unpleasantly.

And in front of her, V was dying.

'Wait.'

She did not raise her voice. She did not have to.

V paused, and she knew even under the patterned shadow of the wire-mesh, he could see her as clear as if she was standing next to him. Could see her shaven head pale and smooth under the bleached moonlight, her dark eyes like a ghost's, the splattered rose-red like a noose around her neck.

An old instinct whispered this to her, from the way the way his hands stilled, the way he looked at her, and for a heartbeat, she almost understood why...

How nice... that he is haunted, for a change...

Evey gave the frozen man a hard, crooked smile and heard the Fingerman behind her draw in a breath to speak. There was no time to think of anything clever, anything witty like he could-- she opened her heart, all the fragile pieces of it, and gave him the most precious shard.

'My choice,' she said simply. Then Evey took the hand shaking under her jaw and pulled the knife hard across her throat.

* * *

_Therein lies the rub-- Shakespeare_  
Also, take this as Chapt one, directly continued part B. 

Concrit and feedback greatly appreciated, always. :)


	3. Flashes before your eyes

A/N: Wow, I don't know what changed from chapt 1 to 2 to inspire the change in response, but it really is gratifying (though albeit puzzling) to know I'm not writing just for myself. Thank you!--here's a slightly longer chapt.

**A note on accuracy**: I did absolutely no research on the proper medical nature of this. I'm wrapping myself in artistic liability, here. For those who want accuracy, let's play safe and just say the fic ended last chapt: Evey is dead. Angst and reader irritation abounds.  
For the rest who can grip their teeth and bear it: onwards!

* * *

The pain did not come instantly.

There was a slit-second of shock, inexplicable disbelief of her own actions disconnecting her from her body, and _then _it hit her. Agony so sharp and mindless, it ripped away all thought and sight and voice. Couldn't even scream—she'll die drowning in her own blood, writhing like some butchered sacrifice, like some— scarlet, the world was painted in shades of blinding scarlet, and of all ways, to die, this black pain, _this_—

Reality came in violent, jerking gasps: the very air tasted of copper, it glued her tongue thick and seemed to wax her lungs. She was on the ground suddenly, forearms and cheek in the congealing pool of dead men's blood. Everything was crimson, bright crimson, and for a moment she feared she'd gone deaf—all she could hear was the thunder of her heartbeat pounding out the last seconds of her life, the desperate roar of her dying blood in her ears.

She did not want to die alone like this, cut off in her own pain. Evey's fingers clawed the mix of mud-dust and blood and for a moment, she thought this is what the watersheds meant, this is how terribly prosaic her death is…

There were hands lifting her around, and a rough pressure was spiking the cavernous pain of her throat; she tried to twist away, but the pressure just pressed on more insistently till she was sure someone was strangling her. Evey opened her eyes and saw the mask floating above.

"You stupid girl," the mask was saying, and it sounded strangled as well, like the air really was more blood than breath. "You fool, you little fool! What have you _done?_"

Then V was calling her name, telling her to hold on, she was going to be fine, fine, Evey, _Evey, _and everything was falling apart, falling like her, and the pain swelled up and was too much: Evey stopped fighting. The crimson claimed her and she saw no more.

---

When she woke, the night sky was swinging in rhythmic, violent wrenches. This may because V was carrying her, Evey acknowledged dimly, and that he seemed to be running. Very fast. She had to clench her teeth not to scream at each jolt.

"What—"

She had meant to say _what happened_, and possibly, _why aren't I dead_, but her throat flamed anew and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming herself mute. The air stank of boiled red life.

"Don't speak," V snapped even as his arms tightened around her. His gait grew more erratic, a touch ragged. "You're lucky to be even alive."

He didn't even sound out of breath. He sounded furious. Evey supposed, dizzily, that it was the closest he'd probably ever come to showing fear; she couldn't help scorning him, just a little, for that. Sometimes she thought that being human would be the bravest thing he could ever do.

She hesitated, but the impulse was too strong: she released her fingers from the tight hold they had on V's tunic and explored her throat with tentative touches. It was as she suspected: there was something wrapped tight around her neck, heavy with her blood. It seemed as if the only thing stopping her insides from spilling out of her wound in a hot, liquidated mess was this makeshift bandage.

"Stop that!" V snarled. The mask didn't even tilt down, but somehow V had seen her picking at the chafing cloth. "Or would you prefer to bleed to death? But no, I forget. That was your clever little plan, wasn't it? Vous imbécile précieux!"

Muffled from the mask, she could catch a reel of ugly obscenities being mutilated. It sounded too much like her old cell-guard for her comfort, the one who would drag her off for the torture of the day. Sometime he whistled as he prepared weights around her shoulders while she knelt shaking on a bed of grit-sand.

That is, V whistled. Had to remember that.

She hurt.

"Tell me, were you even thinking, or was it just sheer bloody stupidity?" V was raging again; Evey tried to focus on the words to dim the pain. Every jolt he made convinced her that her neck must surely have been sliced in half and would drop off any moment, leaving her in painless bliss. "You leave for barely two weeks, and already you're—" he cut himself off, perhaps remembering the minefields down this road: "Your body isn't recovered, you little fool! And of all stunts to pull, to cut your own— imbécile! I would have done something, I would have…"

His voice trailed off till the pounding of his strides sounded a mockery in the silence. Even through the fog of pain, Evey couldn't resist.

"What?" she rasped, barely a whisper. Her fingers twisted the fabric of his front and tightened it uncomfortably over his shoulders; V didn't seem to notice. "What?"

The silence from V was a undeniable thing, nearly palatable. It occurred to Evey that he probably never had this problem before her, that the problem_ was_ her. She wasn't about to feel sorry for him just yet. Ideas weren't supposed to have feelings, after all.

"You followed me," she bit out instead, like pronouncing a sentence. Her bitterness was unmistakable.

There was a slight hitch in the rhythm of his running, like a pause in a conversation. Then mask gathered shadows over its pale concaves as it dipped down towards her, blocking out the sight of streetlamps arching overhead like an eclipse descending. For a brief, ridiculous moment, Evey thought he was going to kiss her.

"I didn't," V said simply, and then the night sky blurred into one heart-stopping leap and was left behind.

---

When she came to for the second time, everything was so familiar it was practically black comedy. There was the night sky before, she remembered, and then the pain from V's landing had been merciful enough to blank her mind again, and now...

There were columns of leather-bound books rising around her like muted guardians, and that peculiar sense of bedsheet domesticity that came from the cosy intimacy of the cramped walls lined with pages. At the corner of the room, a gas lamp that spread an orange hush over rosewood dressing table, glinting golden off the pathetic scraps of mirror-pieces still dripping from the frame like arctic stalactites: Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici. Her old friend. Her bed, the books, the rest of the room was lit in a soft colorless light reminiscent of early daylight, much like the time she first woke up in this room, so afraid and clumsy with doe-eyed wonder.

Now she wasn't afraid but the room felt as if she'd never left, as if nothing had changed and wasn't that funny, wasn't _that _downright hilarious? Wasn't it such a great cosmic joke that every choice she makes always ends in the same place, no matter how she runs?

This hot stinging of her eyes—it was from tears of mirth, that's all. There was nothing to be frustrated about, nothing.

V slipped into the room when she was struggling to sit up. It seemed like every muscle in her body was connected to her throat; it ached stiffly and strangely.

He came by the bed and knelt, put his hands on her shoulders. When Evey realized he was gently holding her down instead of helping her up, she opened her mouth to protest but he beat her to it:

"I've just finished stitching your wound up," he said evenly. There was no anger in him now, nothing more of that dark and vulnerable thing she'd glimpsed hiding beneath. She could still smell her blood on him, just dried. "It'll be better if you rest."

The tension refused to leave Evey's shoulders; she hesitated, unwilling under his hands till he added, "You can leave anytime you want, of course."

The ease with which he said it surprised her and she sank back to the sheets. V watched her silently, unmoving as the rest of the room. He was too close; she could see the marks scratching the cheeks of the mask and the scrapped edge of the chin, and yet somehow there was an abyss between them with all the distance of separate worlds. His hands were still light on her shoulders but his arms were still raised above her chest, carefully: he did not want to touch her.

In the space between, there was a silence like a note held down too long, humming in her spine: V being eloquent without even trying.

Evey could not listen to it any longer. "I saved you, didn't I?" she said, as if in defense, and was immediately mortified by petty resentment she heard. What was she, seven years old and guilt-tripping her brother into giving her the last sweet again? She fumbled through the blush that was heating her face, resentment growing childishly and inexplicably:

"I mean, it worked, didn't it? He was distracted and..."

"Yes." V seemed to take pity on her cracking voice. "I can honestly say neither of us expected your—what you did. Fortunately, I recovered noticeably quicker than my counterpart. Though," and she couldn't help but notice his voice darkening imperceptibly with disapproval— "I can't help but think there were other, less deadly alternatives at hand."

A flicker of irritation rose in her. "Yes, sure," she said as sardonically as whispering allowed. "The way he was holding me definitely gave me a whole _range_ of alternatives. I guess I couldn't resist the melodrama. It wasn't as if _you_ were helping."

It was strange: V didn't flinch, but she did. His hands were light as a caress on her shoulders still; they were weighing her down, sinking her in waves of clean-washed sheets. He was barely touching her; he would drown her yet. He nearly has, many times.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. He said it clearly as a remark on the weather, as if he doled out apologies everyday. Evey stared at him disbelievingly. "I suppose I should thank you then."

Then his head tilted in the same way it had in the alley, and it was like the shock of seeing him about to unmask himself all over again:

"Thank you," said the terrorist, and there was nothing but sincerity in the words. He took his hands away.

"Wait," Evey tried, shame bleaching her words dry, "I didn't—"

"I brought you clean clothes." V put a set of something cotton-dry in her hands; she stared at it unseeingly and realized her hands and arms were caked maroon dark. In fact, most of her seemed to have been in a bloodbath recently, which was not far from the truth.

"I don't believe you're in any immediate danger now. I gave you some morphine when you were knocked out, and I'll give you another dose later if you need it, but the best analgesic would be for you to sleep. Not talking," he added, when she opened her mouth to speak, "would also be recommended."

He was so calm that it was eerie: Evey wanted to scream to get a reaction, some reaction, _anything_. Even the furious, shaking V was better than this—this bedside manner.

Briefly, she wondered if V had been waiting for her to condemn him all along, _wanting_ it. Roses, an equation, and a monster again. It wouldn't surprise her.

"Where are you going?" she said instead, surprising herself. An old instinct was stirring her: she could see it in the way he moved.

He evaded it easily enough. "I'll be back soon." He reached over to under her chin and seemed to check on her bandages with feather-light touches she couldn't feel. Polite, and quick. "Rest and gather your strength. You'll be able to bathe when I get back."

The abruptness tugged at her, uneasily. V hadn't left the Gallery for nearly a fortnight after he'd released her. And now he seemed thrumming with energy to go, after she was an inch and cut away from death?

"I still have questions," she tried. An understatement: she had a plethora of them, itching in her mind worse than the needled mothballs that seemed clogging her throat. Questions like what happened, why were you there, why did you drop your knives, how close was I, is this real—what happened, what happened? Am I still free?

There was a bewildered sort of hurt when V merely nodded impatiently, already getting up.

"Which I will gladly answer after you rest." He drew the covers over her in one quick movement. "It won't be long; I'll be back before you know it."

But he didn't go immediately. Evey watched, puzzled and resentful, as he leaned down and reached towards her. She'd been expecting him to adjust the bandages again, so the feel of his hand cupping the side of her face came as a shock.

For the first time, she realized he wasn't wearing his gloves. Dumbly, she looked up at the mask as if the painted grin would give any clue. A jump in her chest; she dreaded that he would say…

"Evey," V said quietly, and there was an infinite pain in her name, and a world offered.

Then he was gone, no more than a movement of darkness. Nothing in the room again but the light that was suddenly too bright and her questions; the rough warmth of his palm under her jaw—too hard to be affectionate, too tentative to be possessive. Like the night had never happened, like he was never there. Like she never left. The last two weeks had been a series of disjointed scenes, a telly with poor reception that flickered between wavering channels. Tonight the snow-fuzz had cleared and what she'd feared had come true: there had only been one channel all along. Only one plot, and it certainly wasn't her's.

Her throat ached, an angry death-grip numbed by the morphine. Evey lay staring at the ceiling that she knew better than her own apartment, and took comfort in knowing that her wounds probably hurt V more than her. They always did.


	4. Goodwill and peace

A/N: Good news, guys-- WE HAVE PLOT! Yes, I've been bumbling along with no real clue what's going to happen next. But now-- Plot outlines: the new black. XD

* * *

V waited till he was out of the room before he started shaking.

He was shaking. He couldn't stop. A pounding terrorizing his head, too fast, too rapid to possibly be his heartbeat. A weakness in his muscles, in the flex of his wrists and knees.

In the corridor, he had to steady himself against the wall. It was absurd.

He couldn't quite laugh it off.

An image surfaced: Evey, her dark eyes unseeing, so fragile in the bright red staining her white front, so perfectly still in his arms. The dark red of her throat like meat carved, so similar to all the others he'd killed except it was Evey, his Evey, and the world had stopped in that moment. He'd nearly taken off his mask for her.

Sweet Christ. He'd nearly taken off his mask for her.

V raced atop the roofs of London as if his life depended on it.

The moon was hiding behind clouds and the city lay sprawled before him, all jagged outlines like knocked-out teeth in a dark maw. Occasionally, little squares of dim amber light winked from the buildings like the furtive signings from shipwrecked islands, shivering in flickers. A sea of quiet had settled with the darkness, and V could feel the night's awareness watching him: a silent requiem from the stars calling across the endless night.

Evey nearly died tonight, and it should've just been an irrelevant detail in the grand scheme of things. She must have understood this-- she was so calm about it that he wanted to shake her-- because that was all it was: another unfortunate causality of necessity. It was just a moment of weakness, nothing more: he had overcome worse trials in the years. _A mistake_, V reminded himself viciously, and felt the certainty coil around his mind like a serpent waiting. _An unforgivable mistake, a rash one-- the part of the dues one pays for a full life. No error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest of men. Freedom is not worth having without the freedom to make mistakes. That's all._ A mistake, nothing more: terrible, but correctable. He was still V.

It had been the heat of the moment. An unthinking adrenaline rush obliterating thought and bringing out the more primal instincts to do something, to kill, to act. That was all. He could have left any time he wanted-- and he nearly did, he remembered, grasping at the thought like a blind man seeing a sliver of light. It made sense, after all: reason dictated he should have left Evey to her fate. Evey with her sweet aching voice, her beautiful hawk eyes. She would have been black-bagged, interrogated in ways only slightly more vicious than his own, probably raped, but really, the sacrifice was worth it, wasn't it? What was that but mere trivialites when laid bare next to the fruits of his revolution, compared to ten years of planning and seething and blood? Even at her loveliest, with the salt-tears of her exultation on her skin and lightning in her eyes, Evey could never balance out the weight of England's guilt.

The city gaped back under him, pools of streetlamp light like forgotten halos in the gutters, pleaing useless pardon. And far beneath it, in a ugly grey cell, there had once been a girl-child who died for it. Died for integrity, for an idea, and she had nearly broke him along with her. If he had ever meant anything he said to her, he should have slit her throat for her in the alley, a merciful death with all the elegance befitting of a revolutionary matyr.

But then Evey had looked at him like he was the last thing she would see and he couldn't. Couldn't leave, couldn't save, couldn't kill. Ten years, V thought bitterly, and now this. It was too close. When was the last time he'd been so pathetically vulnerable, like that? If Evey was ever taken hostage, away from his reach and used as a bargaining chip...

The idea made his heart drop. His mouth was suddenly, treachorously dry. He would not agree, he was sure. He would be able to walk away. Tonight had just been a mistake, an anomaly; he would not have stripped his revolution and himself of identity for one inconsequential woman. And if he had any doubts, he should deal with it the same way he'd dealt with his other weak flanks: keep under lock and key, or kill.

And he had promised Evey no more locks... and she would rather have the latter over the former, anyway-- she had not hesitated tonight, when she made her choice, her light so bright he could barely bring herself to look at her...

V swallowed his despair and ran. He found the alley in less than half the time he'd taken to carry Evey away. It was nearer than he'd remembered. When he reached his target, the man was already starting to wake. He was starting to scream, too, but the thick dark cloth wadded in his mouth prevented anything above a muffled groan from coming through.

Evey had looked at him the same way when she first saw him. That flash of horror, of twisted realization and then the worse of all—her resignation like his presence was a death sentence over her head. _Liar_, she'd whispered, just when he thought her captor was actually going to agree to the absurd offer, and then she had looked at him with all the unforgiving compassion in the world and he had known.

He had known all along, perhaps. He had not meant to... to make her...

The Fingerman's foot scuffed his boot by accident, and V snapped back from his self-loathing.

"Why monsieur, do forgive," V purred, venom-sweet, and couldn't resist twisting the hilt of the knife as he tugged it out of its sheath. The man's stifled scream intensified and the whites of his eyes showed.

"I had to accompany a lady home. I do believe you've met her?"

Oh, he was angry. Evey's terrible smile flashed like a light snapped in the dark: _my choice_, she'd said sweetly, as if she really believed it, and he'd nearly laughed at her mockery, nearly broke. Tried to apologize later, her blood seeping past his desperate fingers, but too late— here lay Evey, most beloved, rest in peace. A rag-puppet in his arms. He'd robbed her of her choices as surely as she'd robbed him of his, damn her, damn it all!

The anger swelled. Violence beckoned like an old lover, coy and willing. V twisted the other knife out of the man's other thigh and wiped it on the writhing man's coat. He inspected the twin knives sticking through both his victim's hands, slightly irritated at the mess of dripping red waxing the protruding blade tips and disappointed at the shoddy work. He hadn't really been thinking clearly at that point, but that was hardly an excuse.

"Now really, that's a little rude," V tsked as the Fingerman started to drag himself backwards, moaning, his feet scrapping at the ground. It was pathetic. "Oh no, my friend, we aren't done yet."

V leant over and picked the man up by the throat, letting him gurgle against the throttle of gravity. Behind the mask, the voice sounded as if it was smiling, joyously.

"We've barely even started."

---

It was the familiarity of it that woke her.

She had closed her eyes for just a minute—just to get her bearings, restore some sense—and when she opened them again, there he was: the silent devil in assassin-sable, looming over her like some dark angel.

He could have been standing there for hours, for all she knew. Evey knew he used to watch her, before her incarceration, in the same unthinking way most people looked at the seascape or stargazed during night picnics. As if her breaths had the regular pull of the tide, as if there were whole universes entangled in her hair. She'd read too much into it, once, naïve and so self-centeredly gratified; now, she knew better. After her release from her enforced solitude, she'd looked the same way at anything vaguely humanoid.

"I though' you wen' ou'?" she mumbled, her tongue thick with sleep. The figure nodded, his outline blurred with the shadows.

Evey struggled to gather her thoughts, pulling them through the drowsiness smothering her like heavy quilts. Drugs? No, exhaustion. Or blood loss. Or…didn't matter…

"Can I bathe now?"

She offered a hand plaintively, her other elbow digging into the mattress as she tried to sit up. The world swam, nauseatingly.

"Please?" Evey said drowsily, when her hand groped at empty air. Her throat was on fire, cracks of molten pain spreading with each ungainly attempt to jerk upright. Throwing up would probably be a nightmarish process. The room swayed, insistently, merging shades of monochrome. "I want to get out of the blood…"

Her first realization was that V had pushed her offered arm away. The second was that the darkness was very close suddenly, obscuring everything, and there was an unsteady warmth by her ear.

V hesitated only a breath longer before his arms went under and around her: he scooped her up. Panic made Evey clutch at him frantically before she realized what he was doing. He stood still for a moment to let her regain her equilibrium, let her weak struggling die down to best adjust herself to him, then he was off. Carrying her to the bath like she was a newborn kitten in need of a wash.

The front of his fabric was dry and warm under her fingers; he must have changed before he came. Evey rested her head against the man's chest and pretended not to hear his heartbeat echoing hers.

Reaching the bathroom told her that V had been anticipating her wish. The mirror was already clouded with steam from the water in the tub, and the humidity that enveloped them upon entering made her limbs feel sore and heavy. Everything was the same as when she'd left: the meticulously clean albino tiles, the dark pipes lining by the shower like underground veins, the pale sheen of moisture clinging to the walls like beads of perspiration. Unlabelled bottles on the sink and shower-shelf, all carelessly placed with the indifference of expediency; a toothbrush in a cup, a sea-grey towel flung uncaringly over the shower paneling. Behind the door was a pile of dark clothing, innocuous until one spotted the rust-stains that seeped in the tile cracks under the pile—the tokens of V's expeditions.

Well, not completely the same, Evey couldn't help observing with a strange little thrill. He had been neater when she was here, to the point where she hadn't been sure he used this bathroom at all, and her own accessories had littered the sink top.

This was a bachelor's bathroom.

She caught sight of herself in the misted mirror, a vague shape coloured in mud-maroon and pale flesh, curled against a broad form of black.

"God," the words came without thinking, startled into being at the sight of her own fuzzy reflection like some grotesque fetus, "I look like…"

_A monster_, her mind prompted. Evey clamped her mouth shut.

"Like Eve," V said. He sounded tired. "Earth, ash, and Adam's rib."

He set her down carefully, one hand on her waist to brace her. Evey tested her legs and found her most of her dizziness had fled, save for the lightheadedness ringing in the back of her head. "I thought you didn't believe in religion."

V's tone was dry. "I don't. But I believe in good stories. How do you feel?"

Evey resisted the automatic snipe. "Better than before."

He must have caught her longing glance to the steaming water: "I'll be just outside—"

The casual ease in his voice suddenly infuriated her. "Wait." Evey turned her back to him and gestured to her shirt which was partly congealed to her skin. "Help me take this off."

She went on, steady as pragmatism, "It hurts when I move and it'll be easier if you could just pull it off."

There was a brief, painful silence. Evey was about to raise her arms when V spoke, sounding strange and much closer to her than before. He pulled her arms down, then released her as if she was infectious.

"Don't move," he murmured, his breath tickling the top of her scalp, and then there was something cold skimming down from her nape to the small of her back, following the shivers of her spine. Evey froze and thought wild thoughts about knives and their fixture in her life. She tried not to curse.

There was a slight tug when V's blade reached the end seam, and then the thread tension snapped and V was pulling the shirt awkwardly across her arms from behind, peeling her blood-snakeskin off her as if releasing her from a straightjacket. His movements were quick, as deftly executed as his killings; she only realized what had happened when the pressing warmth against her back disappeared.

Her ripped shirt had been dropped by her left foot, and the leather of V's gloves were cool against on her shoulders. They weren't entirely steady, but the grip was firm.

"Don't move," he repeated, as if he was afraid she would turn. Evey had the sudden urge to do just that, just to spite him. Was he going to pretend nothing had changed, too? As if he hadn't fondled her when he was playing one of the pretend-guards who trekked her up and down that goddamn corridor. He'd terrified her once, when he forced her to strip out open in the corridor, leaving her own fear to anticipate the rape. And now this kindness, this hypocrisy shamed her more than if he had blatantly looked. She was sick of being treated like a victim.

"Aren't injured patients supposed to be watched over during a bath?" she couldn't help saying. If he heard the spite in her tone, he ignored it.

"Evey…" V said, low and warning, that peculiar blandness in his voice from before creeping in. There was a start of shame, of angry hurt.

She could have said: _I thought ideas weren't supposed to care, V, _or _I've seen the way you look at me_. She could even have said _you don't like me being here, do you?_ because it was frustratingly clear he didn't. Instead, Evey brought her hands to touch the bandages around her throat. Lightly, from the sides of her neck, near to his hands.

"What were you doing just now?"

"Places to go, people to kill," he replied easily, his typical throwaway black humor.

"And before... were you following me?"

No hesitation this time. "No."

"I suppose I'm just supposed to trust you on that."

The hands around on her shoulders tightened, imperceptibly. "The highest truth cannot be put into words," V said, and there was a strange relief at finally hearing him quote-- "I saw you disappear into the alley, and three men behind. That was the only time I've followed you. There are no more lies here, Evey."

"No, only an artist," she retorted. But she didn't press the matter. She thought briefly on asking him whether he would have really taken off his mask, then thought better of it. Weariness seeped into her bones, heavy as the steam in the room.

"The water is getting cold," he said after a beat. "You should bathe first. I'll answer your questions later."

But his grip didn't lessen, and for a moment Evey wondered if he was considering making a run for the door immediately after releasing her. How absurd.

"How long would I take to heal?" she murmured when he didn't move, her fingers searching for her pants zip. "Or do I have to speak in whispers for the rest of my life--"

"You should be fine after a week, though I'd not advise strenuous activity for some time." She could feel the tension in him as he added darkly, "You're lucky that the blade was so dull, or there wouldn't be the rest of your life to worry about..." He paused, and the change in his tone caught at her.

"I... would like to know before you leave again, Evey."

"Yes, of course," she said, distracted. Only thirteen days away from V and it was not enough; something in her thirsted for more, yearning for freedom. The need to get away could be as bad as missing him sometimes, as sudden as hate. "Say our goodbyes like before, you mean?"

"...not quite," he said quietly, but Evey had found the zip and unclasped the top of her pants. She stripped herself of her bottoms without a second thought.

There was strangled sound from behind her, and the weight on her shoulders jerked back instantly, but Evey didn't bother to glance back. She stepped into the tub carefully, hissing at the blessed heat as she lowered herself in. When she finally looked up, the room was empty and a shadow was pacing in agitated rhythm from the gap under the door.

She could call out, she supposed. She could apologize for his abrupt dismissal, only she doubted either of them would believe it. Turnabout is fair play, as the accepted guide for V's morality seemed to be.

In the bath, Evey watched the water mist pink with the blood of dead men, and thought she might've overestimated the importance of V's mask after all. He seemed fine.

* * *

_1. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. - Sophia Loren  
2. There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. -John Dalberg-Acton  
3. Freedom not worth having if there is no freedom for mistakes. -Gandhi  
4. The highest truth cannot be put into words. - Lao tzu.  
5. Reference to "...artists use lies to tell the truth"- V4V, movie_

Thanks for any feedback! I really, really appreciate it. :)


	5. The price of wishes

A/N: Exams and a new neighbourhood are approaching with terrifying speed, so next chapt might be a while. Also, I've fleshed out the plot line, got a vaguely better grip on what I wanted, and cleaned up all the chapts.

Just a note, to those who seem to think this is ending soon-- this is going to be a _long_ fic. We are pretty much still at the starting line. (oh, horrors!)

* * *

Evey soon learned that V was better than fine. He was actually _completely_ fine. He was the perfect, amiable gentleman again. He was the apron-wearing V before her betrayal. He was, in fact, bloody _fantastic._

He had moved on.

It was very hard not to strangle him, sometimes.

Which was completely hypocritical and yet so depressingly typical of her, Evey reflected morosely. The cityscape blinked back at her in a thousand insect-like lights, the insides of a beehive spilled and flickering with subdued life as it coated the land in sullen towering shapes and squatted, cramped houses. Eventide always gave the best viewing: the interlude between the harassed bustle of the day and the hushed, cowed stillness of deep evening. From the roof, this strange flat landing that looked down on the trivialities of the Londoners below, Evey found that the view didn't diminish even without the lightning-play of a christening storm. It gave her a dark, secret thrill— as if she alone held the power to watch the poor fools scuttling about below bow under the weight of Sutler's fist and pass indifferent judgment on them.

Perhaps that was what V felt like all the time. Playing small god must have its guilty addictions.

It could not have been very hard, then, to pick one off the street and attempt to breathe life and eradicate fear by whatever godly—_inhuman_—means necessary. Evey dropped her head to stare at the book on her lap till the lines of cornfield print blurred into one senseless chunk. She tried to pick out the words, fit it into the holes of the story, but an image kept peeking through the white spaces of the text: a masked man, head lowered, the knife in his hand singing in ringing, measured strokes as he sharpened them over a block on the kitchen table.

There had been something inherently private about that scene, in the way he had held the hilt almost lovingly; the intensity in his deliberation that reminded Evey of a man defusing a bomb and devoting himself to the reverent ceremony of it. When the mask had jerked up and seen her, the blade's rasping song ended in an abrupt clatter to the table like an obscenity cussed and V had swept away the stone block and knives like a boy hiding a forbidden magazine. And his voice had smiled in that polite, distant way it could when he'd asked her whether she was hungry.

He had not cooked her anything since her return. It was an irregularity Evey was almost grateful for; she would not have eaten it. There was something to be said about giving your life up for a man who stopped caring after the fuss was over—it took your appetite away, even if the wound's ache didn't.

Evey forced her thoughts away from the hypocritical hurt—she had _wanted _him to let go, just a few weeks ago; she _wanted _this— and immersed herself in another world where the protagonist's problems didn't seem half as bloody-minded as hers.

She had managed to get through nearly four pages when the light proved too weak for a pleasant read. Evey uncurled herself from her position in the corner and stretched, wincing a little as the joints popped. She stood and went closer to the roof's edge to have a better view, careful not to present too obvious a silhouette. The deepening darkness softened the city, somehow; if she pretended, she could imagine that vague shadow huddled among other indistinct shapes there was the building where she'd rented her apartment.

The longing was an ambush, sharp as it was sudden. A craving to get out, get out, _get out._ Away from V, away from his revolution and his blinding obsession—_away_, alone. It was like gasping in a breath of fresh air, a dizzying rush of the lungs— and then it was gone.

Evey gripped the rough-weathered edge of the stone balustrade carefully and stared across dusk-smothered London till her eyes watered.

She could play small god too, a thought whispered, emerging from the chaos of her frustration. Like V. Or at least, pretend. To pick one off the street…

She nearly laughed: it was unthinkable. Even V had barely been able to do it— at least, she'd thought…? The angry doubt returned, gnawing.

She had been so sure, before. So viciously sure that her interrogation had been as bad for V as it had been for her. It was the only thing that kept her away from the knives, some nights…

… and he had moved like an wounded man after her release and talked like a dying one when she left… but it must have been all an act, all another mask, and one that he's now lost patience with, that bastard, how _dare_ he, how _could _he, because now—

Evey did not know how long she stood there, lost in the web of her thoughts. When something cold touched her shorn head, she jerked in surprise and looked up to have another rain droplet fall from the indigo night onto her eyelashes. It was starting to drizzle.

She rubbed at her eye with one hand and was surprised to find there were little white-crescents on her palms. Fingernail marks. She salvaged the book from where she had left it and went inside before something more precious than her could be damaged by rain.

V was not in the kitchen or any of the main rooms, so she surmised he was still out. He had not avoided her like she thought he might after her first bath; if anything, he was around more openly, if that knife-sharpening incident had anything to warn about. They could very well be mere acquaintances who happened to share the same living quarters: they'd not spoken more than a few sentences each since her return, four nights ago. Evey had found she did not have any questions that mattered enough to ask or dare to ask, and V hadn't seemed to notice either way.

In her room, she paused when she placed her book on her dressing table. Her old friend with the weeping shards and five Vs had been replaced by a stout, dark-framed mirror. Its lean, horizontal lines fit well with the glazed top of her dresser, but she could not help missing the more ornate and decadent look of its predecessor.

A rose-blush stain at the side of her bandaged patch attracted her eye just then, barely visible under the cream gauze. Evey leaned forward for a better look, forehead furrowing as her fingers pried the gauze clear.

"What are you doing?"

The dresser's legs stuttered against the floor as Evey's hips knocked against it as she spun around. She resisted the urge to put her hands behind her back like she was a caught thief again, back in front of a steel-faced matron in the Reclamation Centre.

"I thought you went out?" she said, then cursed herself for making it sound like an excuse.

V nodded. 'I've only just returned." He didn't move from his position in the doorway, flanked between the timbers like an underworld archangel framed.

"Are the bandages coming loose?" he asked politely, when she only turned to sit, examining her throat in the mirror again.

Evey gave an irritable half-shrug, more concerned with why her wound appeared to be bleeding again. She felt it tentatively. "No, I thought I saw something. It's nothing."

She was so used to their unspoken arrangement that when the reflection behind her filled up with black, it was a shock. The mask grinned impassively above her head; in the clear, bright light of the room, with no shadows or warm colours to compliment V's theatric dressing, a grown man in a cloak and bizarre mask should have looked ridiculous. Instead, he looked like he belonged in the room of literature more than the shaven-head woman in the mirror.

He leaned down so the chin of the mask was level with her ear. "I see it," he murmured. Warmth flirted on her cheek. Then his fingers were pulling hers away, intent on uncovering the wound himself and it was instinctive – she could not help it: Evey flinched.

V was so still for a moment that she wondered if he had stopped breathing. Then there was a gaping chasm between them; V was suddenly a good arm's length from her, out of the mirror's stare, and the dark intensity that had been so close to her dissipated in the bright light.

"I apologize," he said with that controlled, bland tone. She was starting to despise it. Evey stared at him blankly, hand still half-raised under her collarbones as he continued, "You can, of course, treat your own wounds. I'll just get the—"

"Your gloves are damp, V," Evey interrupted bluntly. She could still smell the copper from here, unmistakable and sickly rich.

V stared at her for a moment, as if uncomprehending. For a moment, Evey wondered if he really wasn't aware of the blood on his hands, splattering his dark tunic and trailing on the fringes of his cloak like some morbid procession; that he'd gotten so used to it that he no longer saw anything different.

Then V seemed to look down and see himself: death in black and unseen scarlet, the dark handles of his personalized scythes lining his waist. The heavy scent of lives lost was starting to pervade the bedroom, lingering on the pastel bedsheets and curling around the stacks of happy endings; he was the only dark thing in the white-lit room.

He looked up and saw her face.

"It was an unusually busy evening," the murderer said shortly, as if it explained everything. "Allow me to change."

He was gone before Evey could answer. The rosewood of the floorboards had slight smudges of something darker, left by his cloak and boots; she had a feeling it wasn't rainwater.

She also had a feeling she should feel more repulsed by this, somehow. It wasn't normal, it wasn't right… There should be something more to knowing he was out slaughtering men who were in all probability just doing their jobs, more than this mild curiosity…

Evey stared at the calm-eyed woman in the mirror and started to feel sick, for all the wrong reasons.

When V returned, the feeling had suppressed into something darker, angrier, and she was starting to pull the gauze away. V made a sound of protest and came forward instantly, leaning down again as dry gloves brushed her uncertain fingers away. Experience made quick work of the gauze and cotton pad.

"It's clear," the mask exhaled, and there could have been a trace of relief in there. "Perhaps not quite the unkindest cut of all." He showed her the pinkish stain absorbed by the cotton in the mirror; from the line of her cut, a clear reddish fluid had seeped through.

"It means it remains uninfected, at least for now," he was explaining, but Evey's eyes were trained on the stitched slash on her neck. It stood out, a mottled red against pale skin. She touched the edges of the coloured skin lightly and thought of scars and monsters.

V watched her in the mirror. He straightened up as she winced, her fingers brushing against a tender spot.

"If you keep picking at it, the stitches will come loose," he said, and for some reason, it was that blandness in the tone that did it. That damned unreadable mask. The way he touched her, quick as fear; the alternate thickness and indifference in his voice as if there were two people behind the mask and they were playing an idle game of Make-Evey-Guess.

The way he was impatient for her to leave, as if she was a once-amusing precocious student that had grown too old to be anything special when this was _her_ life, this was _her_ heart and _not_— some — goddamn — _play script!_

Evey smiled at the masked man in their reflection: a slow, sweet smile that held all the killing intent of a trust betrayed.

In the mirror, she could see V stiffen. The urge to wound him flared with the old hurt, quickly suppressed, and the anger grew.

He may have moved on, may have left her like a forgotten tangent in his vendetta; he may be the most brilliantly deadly idea in London but in the end, he was only a man and she had no illusions.

Evey held all the frustrated bewilderment of the past few days between her teeth and smiled like it didn't hurt. Then, with all the carefully deliberation of defusing her own bomb, she looked straight at the mask in the mirror and _leaned back_.

V froze immediately.

"I suppose I should thank you," she enunciated deliberately, an echo of his words from before. V was still against her, a statue; one of his gloved hands had been reaching for the antiseptic and was now clutching the edge of the table as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. With her shoulder blades resting against his chest and his arm pressing against her shoulder, he could've been cradling her.

A spurt of satisfaction, shame-hot. Evey watched as if from a distance as the gloved fingers curled tighter around the wood, a critical connoisseur to a temperamental performance piece. She could feel his tension like a held storm in his chest, thrumming even through the fabrics between.

She didn't care. "Not only for these few days, I mean," she continued, as if she hadn't turned her head to speak into his neck, as if her head wasn't brushing against the unclad skin just under his jaw. "For since the beginning."

V said nothing. The light in the room was too bright, shearing away all the soft blending that the amber lights of the main halls allowed. In the harsh exactness of the mirror, he looked exactly like what he was: a man, a mask. Nothing more.

"For saving me from the Fingermen the first time." Evey leant her head back against him, waiting for him to resist. He didn't.

"For saving me at Jordan Tower," she went on, patient as a grudge. "For— saving me outside Gordon's house."

V had not moved since she started, had not reacted in any way but tensing. The mask stared at her in the mirror, impassive.

"For the interrogation and after."

Still, V did not move. Save for his usual reluctance to intimacy, he did not seem to mind at all. A kind of dull incredulity was starting to seep through Evey, more hollow than angry.

She pressed on, unwilling to believe, "And now for this. I suppose my life really is more yours than mine."

He shook his head; she felt the movement against her back. "Your life has always been yours," he said, and his voice was neutral. "You just had to take it."

Evey couldn't help the smile that peeked through, crooked with irony. "Another thing to thank you for." How terrible ironic that the only time she'd really made her own choice was to slit her throat. There had to be something symbolic about that.

She should have straightened up, then. Pulled away, because it was clear there was no point now. Lust had been a fine game to play, but vengeance was still a new one to her and V had already let go.

He didn't care anymore. He'd actually let go.

Evey felt the warmth behind her, and thought bitterly on the things she wanted and the price of wishes coming true.

She might as well finish it.

"I want to say thank—" she started, hiding everything but honesty in her tone, when V interrupted:

"Don't," he said, and it was more a sound of pain than a word.

And then he was leaning into her, nothing more than a pressure of solid warmth, a shift in their equilibrium. A shock of desperation as he breathed her in shakily, as his mask tilted in the curve of her neck and shoulder; a rush of sudden, breaking movements and she had lost before it even started: she was already half-turning, going willingly—

He was at the door. She blinked; it might've been her imagination if not for the pounding under her ribs.

The chair scrapped as Evey stood unsteadily, a question in her eyes. He was not looking at her; he did not even want to look at her now, she realized. There was the old twist of bewildered hurt and frustration.

"What you need is on the table," V said at last, to the corridor outside the room. "You should know what to do by now."

Then the doorway framed only shadows and abrupt endings: he was gone, again. Evey knew better than to follow.

---

V did start to avoid her after that. It was nearly a relief, actually.

Evey continued to spend most of her time on the roof, away from V and in the solace of the peace there. Three nights after her ill-ended impulse, she woke briefly and heard a record playing. At least, she thought it was a record at first. When the harmony stopped in an abrupt place, she realized that V was playing the piano— softly, delicately, as if each note was a breath of a secret in the air.

She hadn't been sure he really knew how to play, or if the baby grand had just been there to add atmosphere. It would've been just like him to have a priceless piano brand as an incidental cultural piece. He had not picked up the melody, and she had fallen asleep with it going in incomplete, disjointed circles in her head: an anxious, low tune that rose and ebbed with strangely compelling volatility.

In the morning, the piano gleamed as untouched as ever and V was nowhere in sight. It was drizzling on the roof again, a drab shroud blanketing storm-grey across the sky.

She carried the memory of the promised rain in her head as she wandered the Gallery. There was a current in the air, like the electric anticipation before the breaking of the heavens. Evey thought she could almost here the thunder rolling, a crescendo rumbling in her ears…

Her forearms were prickling in instinctive response when she finally stepped into the last place of her underground life: the interrogation quarters.

_The road to hell is paved with good intentions_, V murmured by her ear. Evey shook her head continued down the narrow corridor, the dark walls rising up alongside her as if a tide waiting to break. The overhead lights were off and only the soft light from the hall she'd come from gave guidance: it arched in a distinct, yellow curve at the start of the corridor and left the rest of the walk in outlines of varying shadows.

The cell was less horrifying than she'd remembered, but the interrogation room was a different matter. _No artist, no lies_, Evey chanted to herself. _Only truth, only truth_… but no matter how hard she tried, she could not see the steel table she knew there, welded to the middle of the room's floor.

Could only see: the fragments that made up the whole, roughly connected. That agonizing edge of the metal corner, the cold apathy of the flat surface that smelled of body fluids and paperwork, the immovable legs of the table where her ankles would always slam, the flashes of blinding white, the blackness that ate at her eyes. And if she stood long enough, stopped fighting hard enough: the stench of fear, of raw animal terror filling the room like air itself.

She could not stay long.

Evey turned to leave, flickering the table spotlight-lamp off and closing the door behind her. She was about to move off when she saw it: the room almost directly across the corridor. The power-showers.

Her throat closed up. From the lining under the door, there was a sliver of light escaping into the dimness of the corridor. It crept over her toes like a plea for help.

Evey stared at it for a heartbeat, numb and uncomprehending. Then, she drew the sliding-door open, a steel rumble under her cold fingers, and saw the corpse.

Strung up by the wrists to one of the shower-heads, the man must have died in gasping agony: only the flat of his toes touched the floor in a sickening mockery of a frozen pirouette. His clothes were stiff and dark with dried blood, and though there was evidence of someone stopping the blood-flow from the man's palms and thighs with tightly-bound bandages, it was clear it had been done to prolong the man's agony rather than save his life. Like a carcass in a butcher's shop— this _man,_ V had treated this man like a sack of _meat_, left him to die—

Her stomach heaved once, twice, three times. Evey pressed her hands to her mouth, but the sound escaped anyway— a cry, strangled with horror, distorted with revulsion. A sickness stole her stomach, nearly stole the strength in her legs. A crescendo building, roaring in her ears, her throat-- steel table, bright light, water tortures; the truth behind the watersheds, if she had chosen wrongly, oh god, _if_…

Evey was going to throw up.

Then the corpse raised his head. It was the Fingerman from the alley.

"Help," the man whispered. She could not look away.

"Help me."

* * *

_1. That is the unkindest cut of all—Shakespeare, adapted  
2. __The road to hell is paved with good intentions- Adage_

A long-winded interlude which was unsatisfyingly difficult to write. Please do take a moment to leave a review; I'd really appreciate it :)


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